ROMANCE: THE SHEIKH'S GAMES: A Sheikh Romance (67 page)

“It’s not fair—why do you get to live in London?” she asked, sitting on his bed.

“I’m not married,” he said, grinning. “How is Omar and my nieces?”

“Omar is Omar,” she sighed, rolling her eyes at the mention of her husband. He was a good match for her—his family (distant relatives of the King of Jordan) was very modern and they were carving out the equivalent of Silicon Valley in the Sinai. She wasn’t unhappy—her children certainly seemed to to drive them both happily crazy—but Bashir could tell that she wasn’t content.

“I can’t believe he’s marrying her,” she exploded, suddenly, her voice brittle with an anger that she hadn’t dared speak of.

“Is there anybody else at the wedding?” he asked. “Any of us, I mean,” he added, before she could remind him that it wouldn’t be a wedding in Bahrain with less than 500 people.

She shook her head. “Malakar and Salamin refused to come. Lena and her husband are moving to Morocco next month and they’re in Manama for the next few days to get their visas and stuff taken care of. So it’s just you and me, little brother.”

“We have more fun together anyway,” Bashir said, winking.

She grinned. “Remember that one time,” she began, “with the
jalebis
—”

“—and how sick Salamin got—”

“And then Papa had to yell at us and Salamin threw up all over Papa’s brand new Italian shoes—”

They cackled together for a while, remembering the sorts of mischief the five of them had gotten up to. But it was sad, too, because it seemed that for every memory they had of a servant running after them, yelling, they also had a memory of saying good-bye to their brothers and sisters, as one by one they got married and went off to fulfill their roles as ambassadors, board members of corporations, doctors, and university professors, in Miriam’s case.

“Come on down for dinner,” Miriam said, getting up.

“We could stay here for dinner,” he offered, gesturing to the little balcony outside his French windows. “I’m sure Muharra—” the oldest servant “—still has a folding table and chairs that I can take, and we can have the kitchen send our portions here—”

“Bashir,” she said, sadly. “No.”

“You cannnot seriously
want
to eat dinner with that bitch,” Bashir said in disbelief.

“Father loves her,” she said. “He’ll be hurt if we don’t come.”

“He should have thought of that before he brought her into our house.”

Miriam sighed and shrugged.
What can we do?
“He’s an old man, Bashir,” she said. “He probably feels that this is his only chance to find true happiness. She’s beyond the age of having children, so it’s not like Malakar will lose anything by it—”

“Wait, you mean he wasn’t happy with Mother?” Bashir asked, incredulous. His mother had spoken of his father as though he ws

“He was happy,” Miriam said. “But—and this is only what I know—he and Alya go back far longer than he and our mother.”

“I know that,” Bahir grumbled. “But he has family—”

“And we need to let him know that we love him,” she said, smiling sadly. “You don’t think he knows what she represents to us? But the heart loves who and how it will,” she said, shrugging. “So come down for dinner. You don’t have to say anything,” she added. “You can be surly if you want.”

He agreed, but it wasn’t until she left that he realized that he didn’t really have any idea how to be surly. He could refuse to speak, of course—but that would only work until someone said something hopelessly backwards. And given that this was Bahrain, and his uncle was here for the wedding as well, backwards ideas were guaranteed.

***

A small wedding
.

It was so strange, seeing the great hall filled with people, that 250 people were counted as a “small wedding”. It was an odd mix of modern technology and tradition—the food was traditional although it was catered, the music was traditional music but piped by a DJ who laid an odd disco beat down. Most of the Bahranis were in the traditional Arabic robes, but Bashir had chosen to wear his suit instead. There were also some Westerners there, too—a cadre of French archaeologists who were apparently friends of Alya, and a Dutch contingent from Royal Shell, which Bashir recalled had been in negotiations for drilling rights off the shore.

Bashir sat back and watched the dancing. As the youngest prince, he would have ordinarily left as soon as the ceremony was over, but he was the only prince here today, so his father was keeping him at the table with stern looks and fierce scowls if he dared so much as shift in his chair. Miriam was smiling at him from across the table, waggling her eyebrows—she’d also been admonished to behave herself, but there was no question in Bashir’s mind that she had something planned.

Any chance of ruining the wedding had been dashed the night before when his father had nixed the idea of him giving a toast. The king had couched it in the most diplomatic of words, saying, “Of course it would be lovely to have a toast given by my own son, but I couldn’t possibly impose such a duty upon you with such short notice.” Bashir watched as his father circled around the tables with Alya, watching the reactions of the wedding guests. As far as he could tell, most of them approved of the wedding, but that just meant that nobody had blathered about the history of the King and Alya.
Time to change that
, Bashir thought sullenly. He’d slipped some vodka into his glass—and now he stood up, not sure about what he wanted to say, only that he was sure he couldn’t call the new queen a whore. Miriam gave him a secret smile—

—just as the DJ started up. He shot the man a displeased scowl, but the man was wearing sunglasses and headphones—standard gear for a DJ, true. But a deliberate way to keep him from being able to give a scathing toast? He had to admit his father was more cunning than he took him for.

Still, now that he was standing, he couldn’t very well just keep standing there like an idiot. He tugged at his sleeves and headed out the side exits—just a guy going to the toilet. The corridors between the great hall and the toilet were full of people coming and going.

He went upstairs. He had his own bathroom in his suite, and it was more private than the bathrooms that were designated for the guests. The palace was a private residence, but it’d been built with public functions in mind, and Bashir had always found it a bit odd that thee bathrooms downstairs had three stalls apiece.

He was washing his hands when he heard the door to his suite open. “Hello?” he called.

“Prince Bashir,” came Misha’s voice. He came out of the bathroom to see Misha standing in front of the door to the suite, at the ready as he always was.

“Didn’t I tell you to take our time here off?” Bashir asked.

“Your father asked me to resume duty for the duration of the wedding.”

Great.
“Well, you can tell the old goat to suck it,” Bashir grumbled.

“I’ll pass the message along,” said Misha, nodding his head, but otherwise not moving.

“Well, go on,” Bashir said impatiently, as he took his jacket off and hung it up. “You’re allowed to go—you’re dismissed—”

“A thousand pardons, Prince, but I was ordered to make sure you got back to the festivities.”

“I’m not a child,” Bashir protested. “I know my way to the damn hall.”

“Those are my orders,” Misha said.

“Well, you’re
my
bodyguard, and my orders are to go back to the great hall, have yourself a cocktail, and just relax already. My dad just wants to keep an eye on me and make sure I don’t screw up his wedding.”

Misha hesitated, but in the end he backed out of the room and closed the door after himself. Bashir sighed and took off his tie. It was now that point in the festivities where people were loosening up, and he wanted to be able to stretch his legs and dance.

He went downstairs through the back staircase, though: he was feeling subversive and annoyed that his father would send Misha to do something like that. He was always planning on going back to the festivities—he couldn’t abandon his sister to three additional hours of boredom—but the one thing he couldn’t stand was being summoned like a peon.

I’m his son, too
, he thought, fuming. Last in line, true—but still a prince.
My father never respected me
.
He thinks I’m just a kid
.

“Hey you, there!”

He was passing the kitchen, where the caterer had set up the trays and trays of food that needed to be served. She was waving him in—at first he thought that there was something wrong with the food and that she wanted him to tell the guests that there wouldn’t be any fruit, but then she thrust a tray in his hands, and shooed him away again, saying, “Remember, smile.”

She was a Westerner, British from the looks of it. Her eyes were tired and there was flour in her dark blond hair and her apron was a filthy mess, but she seemed happy as she curled her hair behind her ear and ticked off another box on her clipboard and went back to piping creamy stuff into miniature puff pastries. Two other men, who were very clearly waiters, came in, swapped their empty trays for full ones and backed out again. No wonder she thought he was a member of the staff—with his white shirt, black pants, no jacket or tie, he looked exactly like one of the caterers.

He found himself cracking a smile—he’d never been mistaken for a member of the staff before—and as he backed out of the door he could only imagine his father’s fury at him showing up with a tray, ready to serve snacks and drinks. It would probably be funny—he wondered how many of the people invited would recognize him with a tray in his hand.

He’d gone to enough of these functions to know what people with trays in their hands did: walk around, asking people if they wanted one, smiling politely as people swiped a canape or two. Nobody recognized him, which only confirmed what he’d suspected for a long time—nobody knew who he was, and nobody cared. Only Misha blinked out of surprise when he realized who was asking him if he’d like a piece of baklava—and then he saw the secretive smile, and he knew he had an ally in this matter, at least.

The only thing that he hadn’t expected was that it was too noisy to overhear any of the conversations. The fragments of conversation he was able to hear were mostly about weekend plans and worries about children—girls getting to that age where they should be married, boys not wanting to be married. A few of them even asked his advice. “I don’t know anything about this,” he said, smiling politely. “I obeyed my father.”

“You are a good son,” the guests said, beaming. He couldn’t help but wonder if it were

He wanted to find the king and see if his father would recognize him, but he ran out of canapes before he could make his way over to the king, who was sitting contentedly with Alya and chatting quietly with her, so he returned to the kitchen.

“OK, now these,” she said, without even looking up from what she was doing—stabbing skewers of meatballs and vegetables together. She’d pointed to the tray of filled puff pastries, all of them now dusted with a sprinkle of chives and shaved truffles. “Are they still serving tea?” she asked.

“I think I saw some people walking around with pots,” he said. “But they’ve mostly moved on to the lemonade.”

“Good,” she said. She looked up and frowned. “Are you new? I don’t remember hiring you.”

“I’m filling in,” he said, taking the tray and backing out, grinning.

What would
she
think if she knew that she’d been bossing around a prince? Guilty, he imagined. Or maybe just amused. Hard to say; Westerners had a weird sense of equality—the British Queen was gossiped about like so much schoolgirl drama fodder, but Kim Kardashian, someone he simply did not understand, was elevated to near-idolatry. So how long should he keep this going?

He found Miriam sitting by herself, texting furiously on her phone. She almost didn’t see him as she absent-mindedly picked up one of the canapes and popped it into her mouth. At the last second, though, she caught his eye and her eyes went wide. He grinned and pressed a finger to his lips.

“Bashir!” she whispered, but he turned away and offered some more puff-pastries to another couple before she could stand up to confront him. He saw her smiling despite her shock. There was a reason Miriam was his favorite sibling.

He liked serving the food. It was silly, but he liked the woman’s bossiness, the way she knew exactly what had to happen and when, and how she wanted things done. He liked that she knew stuff and wasn’t afraid to admit it. There was no false modesty about her, and she was easy to talk with, and as the evening went on, he found himself staying in the kitchen for progressively longer times.

He’d been right about her being a Brit: it turned out she’d grown up not too far from where he now lived. Her name was Melinda Doyle, and she had the pale skin and dark hair that was typical of Celts, as she put it. As he helped her clean up and stack the trays into her van, they talked—about the marriages that his father was always proposing, her about how hard it could be as a single woman living here. “So you’re not engaged or attached?” he asked, wondering how this could be. Her Arabic was pretty good, and men would line up for miles for a chance with an exotic girl.
Familiarity breeds contempt
, or something like that, he supposed—but there was something appealing about English girls, how polite but forceful they could be. There was a dangerous edge to their words—they could go from flatteringly polite to scathing with the slightest change of inflection.

“Nope,” she said. “Never met the right bloke. I never did understand the whole arranged-marriage business,” she added. They’d switched to English—she was probably homesick for her mother tongue, he supposed. “I mean, what if you really hate whoever it is your parents picked out for you?”

“You learn to live with it. So I’m told,” he said.

“But you’re trying to get out of one,” she guessed.

“I’m trying to keep my father from meddling in my life,” he said.

“Good luck,” she said. “Why do you think I’m here?”

“Don’t you miss England, though?”

She shrugged. “Sure,” she said. “But here—I don’t have anybody to tell me what kind of bloke to get with and to hurry up with the grandchildren already.”